It is known to provide a seat belt restraint system in a vehicle to restrain an occupant in a seat of the vehicle. In most vehicles, the seat belt restraint system may be formed with a lap belt and a shoulder belt. Typically, the lap belt and shoulder belt are made from one continuous length of belt webbing and have a tongue or latch plate for insertion into a buckle. The tongue can be and often is slidably affixed on this belt webbing. When the buckle and tongue are buckled together, the seat belt restraint system restrains movement of the occupant to help protect the occupant during a collision.
Typically, the webbing or anchor cable for the buckle of the seat restraint system is fixed to the seat or vehicle structure. In addition, the buckle is most usually located in an inconvenient position toward a rear of the seat cushion, consequently, an occupant of the seat must hunt for the buckle to latch the tongue with the buckle. It is desirable to have a system which allows the occupant to easily locate the buckle for a seat restraint system.
To facilitate connecting or latching the tongue to the buckle several devices have been developed. These devices are often referred to as buckle presenter assemblies.
In some of the prior art most buckle presenters rely on a pivotable rotation of the buckle from a stowed position near seat level to a projecting level above the seat. These systems provide little assistance in latching the tongue to the buckle because the occupant's body still blocks the view during the latching.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,550,867 an assembly with a gear nut and a jackscrew provides longitudinal movement of the buckle between a forward position and a rearward position. In this assembly, the buckle presenter is more readily accessible. The assembly is fixedly fastened to a seat track of the seat.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 8,157,292 uses a rotating screw to move the buckle longitudinally, but further incorporates a pivoting buckle head to facilitate coupling and uncoupling the tongue and buckle.
In these devices when the seat belt is severely loaded, the rotating screw sees a large potentially damaging load or force. This can be problematic and cause an issue with the restraint.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a buckle presenter assembly that isolates and protects the screw drive elements and reliably locks the buckle in its position when under severe loads. It is a further object of the invention to provide a very compact buckle presenter assembly to minimize the space required to employ the device.
These and other objects are met by the invention as described herein.